Special thanks to AgntLuck from the Discord channel. Today we learn how
we can use another software in combination with Cheat Engine to help us find codes
better, easier and more efficient than hunt and peck, trial and error.
Back in 2015, the former Sony Online Entertainment announced it was being bought by investment management firm Columbus Nova and changing its name to Daybreak Game Company (Everquest II, H1Z1, Planetside 2).
Now that the US Treasury Department is sanctioning the Russian oligarch
that owns Columbus Nova, though, Daybreak is suddenly saying that it
has never had any affiliation with its ostensible parent company.
What Daybreak now disputes, though, is that Columbus Nova ever had an
ownership stake in the MMO maker. "From the get-go, Daybreak has been
primarily owned by Jason Epstein, a longtime investor who also has
investments in a variety of media properties," the company wrote in a forum post yesterday.
"We're well aware of prior statements from Daybreak indicating our
company was acquired by Columbus Nova. We have since clarified that the
company was acquired by Jason Epstein when he was a partner at Columbus
Nova, which he left in 2017."
It's those previous statements—which have stood uncontested for
years—that are raising some eyebrows now that the companies are
attempting to distance themselves from the investment management firm.
Columbus Nova was mentioned a number of times in Daybreak's February 2015 announcement press release, which doesn't mention Epstein at all. Columbus Nova was also cited as Daybreak's parent company in the site's privacy policy
from 2015 through at least 2017. Both of those documents have since
been taken down from the Daybreak Games website, but the Internet
Archive links cited above don't forget.
Outside of those previous firsthand sources, there's also a Polygon feature from April 2015
where Daybreak's then-president and CEO John Smedley directly says that
"after kissing a lot of frogs, we finally found a happy home with
Columbus Nova. It was really a match made in heaven." Smedley also
mentions Columbus Nova's investment in a May VentureBeat interview and in a 2016 Polygon interview.
Players of Daybreak games like Everquest II are understandably concerned that the disputed connections between Vekselberg and Daybreak could cause trouble for their favorite titles. Reports suggest
Vekselberg's frozen US accounts contain up to $2 billion in assets and
that the Treasury Department has given his US investment funds until
June 5 to sell off their interest in his companies at a loss and wind
down their related operations.
Given that, it's likely only a small matter of time until we find out
if Vekselberg's legal and financial problems will become Daybreak's via
a disputed business relationship. For now, we'll only say that
something doesn't seem to add up.
[Update: A source inside Daybreak Games (who asked
not to be named directly) responded to Ars' request for comment to
clarify once again that Daybreak was actually purchased in 2015 by Jason
Epstein through his wholly-owned LLC, Inception Acquisitions. Epstein
was an ownership partner of Columbus Nova at the time, leading his
purchase to be conflated with ownership by Columbus Nova itself in
statements and reporting, the source explained.
"At the time, they just didn't think that that was a big deal,
because both Inception and Columbus Nova were Jason's," said the source,
who was not with the company in 2015. "Jason was the primary owner, and
he owned both. Saying Columbus Nova as an investment firm seemed to
make more sense [at the time]... What they should have said was 'Jason
Epstein, owner of Harmonix, purchased Daybreak,' [or] ''Partners of
Columbus Nova purchase Daybreak.'"
"We're not denying he was there," the source continued. But when
Epstein left Columbus Nova last year, any association between the
investment firm and Daybreak (through Epstein) ended, the source said.
Daybreak and Columbus Nova let an announcement of that distinction "fall
through the cracks" when Epstein departed, focusing instead on getting H1Z1 to a full release, they added.
What's more, the source also said that Vekselberg's Renova Group does
not actually own Columbus Nova, despite widespread reporting through
the years suggesting they do. Instead, the source said, Columbus Nova
merely "managed some accounts," for the Russian conglomerate, adding
that those accounts were "not tied to Russia. Renova has other holdings
and accounts, and we've gotten roped in."
In the 80's, if you wanted extra lives, the ability to skip levels, to be
invincible, or anything that wasn't included in your console's video
game...you were out of luck. That all changed in 1990 when Codemasters
created the Game Genie, opening the world of console video games to
amazing ways to cheat and to an extent, a form of hacking.
The Game
Genie was important not only for being a groundbreaking device but also
for establishing a legal precedent. In this video we'll take a quick
look at the Game Genie's various abilities and console versions, how it
worked, as well as its fight just to make it to the market.
Activision's decision to sell Destiny 2 through Blizzard's Battle.net (or the Blizzard app, if you insist on calling it that) is already having ripple effects throughout the platform. Look no further than World of Warcraft, where the real-world value of in-game gold has sunk quickly in the wake of the announcement, according to the tracker at WoWToken.info.
The in-game auction price of a WoW Token—which can be
exchanged for $15 in credit on other Battle.net games—settled at around
120,000 gold pieces on North American servers this morning.
That's up
from a price of about 110,000 gold pieces just before the Destiny 2 announcement threw the market into turmoil, causing the Token price to briefly spike to over 140,000 gold on Thursday evening.
The result looks to be about a 7 percent decline in the real-world
buying power of a piece of WoW gold in less than a week. Put another
way, the functional price of a $60 copy of Destiny 2 in WoW
gold jumped from just under 450,000 gold pieces to just over 480,000 in a
matter of days. An incredibly focused, min-maxing gold farmer could
still earn that gold in a month or two of dedicated WoW play, though.
While WoW
Token prices show minor fluctuations throughout each day, the last time
the market saw this much turbulence was back in February, when Blizzard
first allowed Tokens to be sold for Battle.net credit. Before that, Tokens could only be used to purchase World of Warcraft subscription time and were considered much less valuable at the in-game auction markets.
Since the change, the in-game value of a Token has slowly grown about
22 percent over the course of about three months, from about 90,000
gold pieces on February 15 up to about 110,000 last week.
Looked at
another way, the Destiny announcement condensed about a month's worth of "natural" gold deflation into a single weekend.
As Bungie rolls out suspected plans for microtransaction-based purchases in Destiny 2, we may see in-game demand for the WoW
Token increase even further in the coming months. If you're looking to
trade one video game addiction for another, we recommend trading in that
WoW loot for pre-emptive Destiny funds sooner rather than later.
Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in
video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science
degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC
area.Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl
This June, the next Chapter in The Elder Scrolls Online will begin.
Return to the iconic island of Vvardenfell for over 30 hours of
adventure in a brand new location, with a new class, a new PvP mode, a
new Trial, and so much more.
The fate of Morrowind hangs in the balance and you must take up the
mantle of a hero to help Vivec, the legendary warrior-poet and Guardian
of Vvardenfell, save the world from a deadly Daedric threat.
Set roughly
700 years before the events of
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, ESO's new Chapter
takes you to familiar locations as you attempt to solve the mystery of
Vivec's mysterious illness and restore his strength. Travel from the
volcanic Ashlands to the mushroom-filled forests, and walk the streets
of Vivec City, still under construction at this point in time.
With the largest landmass addition to date, a brand-new player class, and an intense new PvP mode,
The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind is the perfect entry point for new players and a great way for veterans to continue their journey.
Those who already own
ESO can simply upgrade their experience and immediately jump
into the new Chapter when it launches on June 6, 2017 for all platforms,
including on PC in Japan. And thanks to the One Tamriel update from
last October, new players can also sail directly into Morrowind and play
with other adventurers of all levels. The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind also includes all the original ESO
content, so new players will have access to hundreds of hours of
excitement throughout Tamriel. Existing players can choose to carry
their characters over to Morrowind, or start fresh on a new adventure
with a new face.
And you may indeed want to give a new character a go, as
Morrowind introduces the first new class since ESO launched. The new Warden class wields powerful nature-based magic and, true to the Elder Scrolls
franchise, can be customized with a number of abilities to suit your
play style. Explore the island of Vvardenfell and charge headfirst into
battle knowing your Warden's ferocious War Bear always has your back.
Morrowind also introduces a new Trial and PvP mode for you to
check out. Enter the Telvanni tower of Tel Fyr with your strongest
allies to battle your way through the Halls of Fabrication, and explore a
part of the Clockwork City in a challenging new 12-player Trial. Or,
you can head to the Ashlands to take on fellow players in exciting 4v4v4
battles in arena-like environments. These highly competitive fast-paced
matches will feature your choice in a variety of game types across
three different maps.
Four different editions of
Morrowind will be available at launch: the Standard Edition, the
Upgrade Edition, the Digital Collector's Edition and a physical
Collector's Edition. Get all the details on what's included in each
edition here, or you can check out our pre-order FAQ here.
Starting today, when you pre-order any edition of
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, you'll receive the Discovery Pack which contains the following:
Exclusive Warden costume – a costume for all classes that matches the Warden's outfit, as seen in the announcement trailer above
Dwarven War Dog – a unique armored (non-combatant) in-game pet
Treasure Maps – maps detailing the location of Vvardenfell's greatest rewards
Dwarven Crown Crate – a special Crown Crate that gives you the chance to receive Dwarven-themed mounts, pets, costumes and more
Experience Scrolls – advance through Vvardenfell, gaining 50% more experience for two hours
We'll be sharing more details about each of the new features
Morrowind has to offer over the next few months, and can't wait to have you discover the latest Chapter of The Elder Scrolls Online. Tell us what you're most excited about on our official forums, or on Twitter using the #Morrowind hashtag!
With the recent 33c3 concluding at the end of last year, came numerous exploit announcements for the 3DS scene,
many of which have since been implemented and are in working stable
condition. Two of those exploits being soundhax and fasthax, both
developed by Ned Will, a prominent hacker of the 3DS scene.
Alongside
these many exploits and developers, the 3DS scene also consists of many
involved and active community members, which can be noted from the
active discussions on their sub-reddit along with the rapid development rate of recent releases.
As
of this writing, it is now possible to downgrade all current N3DS
models and most O3DS models based on firmware version, using the combos
of waithax/svchax/safefirmhax or fasthax/safefirmhax, keep in mind
fasthax is still in alpha, well technically beta, though not officially
beta as of this writing, but it should be soon, thanks to an active
community, many users have implemented and compiled their own versions
of the exploit and have had great success for many users in the process
of downgrading/installing a9lh+cfw of choice.
Starting
with 3DS models firmware 11.1 and lower, fasthax doesn’t support
firmwares below 11.2, but there is waithax, which provided you have the
patience as the name says, to wait, works flawlessly. A guide for 3DS models below firmware 11.2 can be found here:
Since Plailect has both updated links and instructions.
For 3DS models on firmware 11.2,
things get a little complex. Users of these systems can follow reddit
user Aurolei’s guide, using a custom fasthax/safefirmhax compiled binary
file, that works with any entry point, same as prior.
Keen
warning that this current implementation may be unstable as it is not
an official stable release, but a community release for those eagers
users who would like to downgrade and install the a9lh exploit alongside
Luma3DS/NTR or whichever customer firmware of choice is preferred. I
have personally downgraded two of my own systems using both exploits and
their respectful guides, with absolutely no trouble, exact step by step
instructions must be followed, or user errors are likely to cause
unnecessary conflicts and errors.
Developer Rinnegatamante
just released an update to his tool VitaPad, which lets you use your PS
Vita as a controller for your PC. VitaPad requires a hackable PS Vita
(that is, a PS Vita running on firmware 3.60).
Developer Xyz of team molecule
posted a new article on his recently-created blog, to explain how the
kernel exploit (used in HENkaku for the PS Vita hack) works.
This page contains passwords and key codes in Deus Ex: Mankind
Divided. These codes will unlock doors, open safes / storage containers
and grant access to various personal computers and security terminals.
These
codes can usually be found in Pocket Secretaries around the location of
the object being unlocked. For example, you may find a pocket secretary
in the foyer of an office with the code to a safe in the stock room.
Keep an eye out for pocket secretaries, as they often contain these
codes and important pieces of backstory.
Above: Adam Jensen has to unravel a conspiracy in the oppressive city of Prague.
Image Credit: Square Enix
Deus EX: Mankind Divided has been in the works for several
years, but its sci-fi plot is a prescient allegory for our U.S.
Presidential campaign, where a divisive politician has capitalized on
fears of terrorism and people who are not like us. Donald Trump ought to
play this game, if only because it holds a mirror to his demagogue’s
tactics of using race, religion, and the war on terror for his own
personal political gain.
The cyberpunk story plays out the consequences of an incident where a
nefarious man decides to divide humanity into two factions. His shadowy
organization pits “natural” humans against mechanically augmented
humans, or “augs.” In the previous game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the
aug hero Adam Jensen tries but fails to stop the “aug incident,” where a
signal sent to a chip in every aug’s head compels them to slaughter as
many natural humans as possible. More than 50 million people die in a
massive genocide before Jensen can stop the signal.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided takes place in 2029, two years after the
incident. Now we have a state of “mechanical apartheid,” where augmented
humans are discriminated against and segregated into ghettos like the
Jews in Nazi Germany. Jensen is still trying to find out who keeps
trying to pin terrorist incidents on innocent augs. Meanwhile, the augs
have created their own underground resistance to deal with the
oppression of the naturals. All of this is recounted in a 12 minute
cinematic that paints the grim state of the world and catches the player
up on what happened in the last game.
It is a tale that will remind you of other sci-fi media, such as the Blade Runner film; the I, Robot novels; and the Battlestar Galactica
reboot. But it says a lot about the maturity of video games as a medium
that a major blockbuster game carries such a relevant message. And it
is a warning that if you play with fire, you can start a massive wave of
hatred that can bring an unspeakable conflagration to the world. It is a
mirror for our own times, indeed.
“We didn’t try to change the story to fit real-world events,” said Oliver Proulx, producer of the game at Eidos Montreal, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“The themes we chose just resonate. Cyberpunk helps with that kind of
interpretation. Unfortunately, some themes are a bit more prominent
today than when we started designing the game.”
Mankind Divided’s story is powerful, and it holds a lot of lessons,
if you can survive its numerous flaws and bugs in the gameplay (I sure
hope they fix the big ones in the first day patch). I’ve played it for
many hours, and these are some of my impressions, and I’ll have more to
say later on, once I finish. For now, I’ll focus on why the story pulls
you in and compels you to keep playing. This story is what I like most
about the game.
Jensen discovers a conspiracy that threatens to bring the world to an
all-out civil war. At the outset, he is sent on a mission with a
natural human military team to intercept an arms deal. All goes well
until a mysterious security force with augmented capabilities shows up
and tries to steal the arms shipment. Jensen begins to track down the
conspirators. But he is nearly killed in a terrorist bombing at a train
station in Prague, where the aug incident took a huge toll and the
oppressive backlash against the augs is everywhere. The bombing takes a
lot of civilian lives, and calls for revenge and crackdowns ensue.
It’s up to Jensen, who wasn’t affected in the aug incident and who
doesn’t take sides, to solve the mystery of who triggered the incident
before things get out control again. As he gets his augmentations
repaired after the bombing, Jensen learns he has been equipped with some
experimental superpowers that will help him with both stealth and
combat missions. Jensen has to use his skills in combat, spying, silent
movement, and hacking to infiltrate the places where the secrets are
held. With each mission completed, he gets more resources to enhance his
augs. But it’s all for naught if he can’t stop the conspiracy.
Above: You still have lots of stealth options in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Image Credit: Square Enix
The variety of augmentations add a lot of fun, but they’re also
grounded in reality. Jensen can’t use them all the time, as they drain
his energy sources. So he can’t just charge into combat every time.
Stealth still dominates the gameplay, and that is fitting because Jensen
is up against some very powerful politicians, multinational
corporations, and criminal organizations. Jensen is a one man army, but
across the open world battlefields of Mankind Divided, many more armies
stand in his way.
Jensen also learns that forces within Task Force 29, a global law
enforcement group tasked with stopping terrorism, would be perfectly
happy to blame the bombing on the Augmented Rights Coalition. Humanity
is in the process of dividing into factions of hardline naturals or
augs. Scant few peacemakers stay in the middle. Aug technology companies
are also competing with each other, and they’re perfectly willing to
engage in industrial espionage and private wars to get a competitive
edge.
Jensen’s investigation is harder because Mankind Divided has an open
world with multiple cities, such as the gritty oppression of Prague and
the aug ghetto of Golem City. Jensen can wander about for many hours
performing side missions. Some of these underscore ethical dilemmas, as
Jensen has to decide who he can help and who he has to sacrifice in the
name of his larger mission. I had to skip many of these side missions,
but they told me a lot about the collateral damage among ordinary people
as a result of the mechanical apartheid.
Above: The aug ghetto life in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Image Credit: Square Enix
What emerges is a poignant picture that could really be us in the
near future. Victims are everywhere on both sides. Military and police
presence are everywhere, and their tactics breed resistance.
Surveillance is the norm. Underground hacker communities form their own
resistance. Extremists are born in the ghettos. And the rich profiteers
create massive corporations and billions of dollars in wealth that they
can use to build their own private armies.
At various points in the story Jensen (and you, the player) has to
decide what to do. Should he take the non-lethal stealth path, or will
he be an avenging angel? Should he do that side mission to reunite a man
with his family, or will that cost him valuable time in pursuing the
true enemy. Will you walk down that path that makes it easier for a
high-level politician to blame terror on innocents? Or will you get to
the real truth?
The trailer for the game starts with a message voiced by Adam Jensen,
the “aug” hero of the game. “If you try and rip the world apart,
someone will always put it back together. You can kill dreams. You can
kill innocents. You can kill freedom. But you can’t kill progress.”
That’s an optimistic, perhaps sarcastic view of how the future could
turn out. I sure hope we’ll be lucky enough in our real lives to avoid
this oppressive nightmare future. If the world comes to its
conflagration, we’ll need a lot of Adam Jensens to make things right.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided comes out on Tuesday August 23 on Windows,
the PlayStation 4, and the Xbox One. I played it on the Xbox One. I’ll
have a formal review of the game by the launch day. I think you should
play it in spite of its flaws and bugs. It’s an important game with a
message that all of us have to hear, whether we’re running for president
or not.
Niantic Inc., the company behindthat app you won’t stop hearing about Pokémon Go, has taken a stand against cheaters in the past, or anybody who violates its terms of service, such as sending out cease and desist letters to tracker apps. Now the company has stated that it will outright ban users for those violations.
In a post on the official website, Niantic writes that accounts can be fully terminated for a number of reasons.
“This includes, but is not limited to: falsifying your
location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or
accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner
including through the use of third party software.
Our goal is to
provide a fair, fun and legitimate game experience for everyone. We will
continue to work with all of you to improve the quality of the
gameplay, including ongoing optimization and fine tuning of our
anti-cheat system.”
Some of the best parts at following the game’s success online have
been seeing the myriad of ways people try and skirt around the system.
There’s also fun,
not-as-technical ways people have tried to cheat the game, including
that guy who tried to use a drone to catch Pokémon (it didn’t work).
Niantic came under fire after it issued the cease and desist letters
to programs like Pokevision, which was a live updating Pokémon tracker.
People in suburban or rural areas made use of similar programs since
finding actual things to interact with is more complicated. The company
also wrote a letter to Twitch, which streamed live videos of hacks and
cheats on its website.
It’s also unclear how this will work. If Niantic bans an account,
couldn’t users just make another one? If it’s done by IP address, it
runs into the issue of addresses that are shared among users in the same
area. Is it done by device? There are so many questions and Niantic
isn’t known for being transparent.
Niantic does add in its post that anybody whose account has been
suspended should not make a plea on social media due to “privacy
reasons,” but also so that Niantic can manage requests better and you
don’t call them out publicly if you disagree.
The issue of what is allowed with this app is up in the air, but
because this is the Internet, I’m sure people will find ways around even
these new restrictions.
Hackers have made it relatively simple
to see what monsters are lurking nearby in Pokémon Go. (Credit: Github / PokemonGoMap)
One of Pokémon Go's defining characteristics is that you never
quite know the precise location of nearby Pokémon, since the game only
gives an imprecise "radar" with general distances. A group of hackers
has set out to change that situation, exploiting Pokémon Go's server responses to create an easy-to-use map that reveals those hidden Pokémon in your immediate area.
The hack is the result of efforts by the PokemonGoDev subreddit, which is working to reverse engineer an API using the data sent and received by the Pokémon Go servers. So far, the group has managed to parse the basic server responses sent by the game, which can be acquired through an SSL tunnel and deciphered using relatively basic protocol buffers.
From there, a little bit of Python scripting work can convert the
usually hidden data on nearby Pokémon locations into an easy-to-use
Google Maps picture of your augmented reality surroundings.
Accessing Pokémon Go data in this way is explicitly against the game's terms of service,
which prohibit any "attempt to access or search the Services or
Content, or download Content from the Services through the use of any
technology or means other than those provided by Niantic or other
generally available third-party web browsers." That means your
account could be banned if developer Niantic detects you using one of
these tools and that you should probably create a new dummy account if
you're just curious about seeing the hacks for yourself.
Niantic could also take steps to further obfuscate its server data in
the future or attempt to block access by unapproved sources from
outside the game. Such moves would no doubt lead to a programming arms
race between Niantic and hackers eager to keep the game's hidden bits
exposed (Niantic Labs wasn't immediately available to respond to a
request for comment from Ars Technica).
While mapping previously hidden Pokémon is obviously a good way to speed up advancement in the game, it also robs you of some of the serendipity of discovery that makes Pokémon Go
special. Simply walking to a set point on a map ends up being a little
less satisfying than stumbling on the hidden critters yourself.
This kind of mapping also has the potential to hamper some of the
social interactions that have helped the game become an instant hit.
After all, why bother asking a nearby player if they found any good
Pokémon nearby when you can just call up an app that tells you their
location instantly?
That said, developer Ahmed Almutawa, who first posted his Pokémon Go mapper on Saturday evening,
doesn't seem worried about these kinds of tools damaging the game
experience. "Ever since I've made this, I've had a lot more fun," he
said in an interview with The Verge, "mostly because I could see where all the lures are and go to where all the people are hanging out."
That said, Almutawa added that he realizes "it is Niantic's game and
they're free to do with it whatever they do. I do hope that they're fine
with the map itself [and] it's not causing them any issues."
Doom on Ultra-Nightmare difficulty without any upgrades!
The
graphic settings are different for this run compared to my previous
ultra-nightmare run. I changed to ultra settings and 105 FOV (120 FOV is
max, my other video was 90). I also reduced the bitrate\quality of the
recording a bit to reduce the size\upload time. I also removed glory
kill highlight, compass and changed crosshair.
No upgrades are:
- No weapon upgrades
- No armor upgrades
- No runes
- No argent cells (first cell is forced)
And no use of glitches\sequence skips, as that would make it trivial.
- No weapon upgrades does a lot less damage.
-
The armor upgrades are very useful for preventing massive damage from
barrels and self-rockets, and also missing faster weapon switch as well
as more effective powerups\grenades. A single barrel or a face rocket
can end your run very quickly.
- No runes will not allow me to grab
runes like for example saving throw which gives me a second chance, rich
get richer which gives me infinite ammo, or equipment powerup which
allows me to get armor from the siphon grenades.
- No argent cells
gives me a lot less health, armor and ammo. I can't afford to lose my
health from the mega health powerups later on, as I can't go over 100\50
from pickups. The lack of ammo makes it very important to be aware of
where the ammo pickups are and not to waste the chainsaw ammo.
This
UNM run is over an hour faster than my previous one, the main reasons
are because I play a lot better, I know where to go and without upgrades
I don't have to spend any time doing rune challenges, grabbing secrets
etc.
Why did I decide to do it without upgrades? Apparently a
lot of people have beaten it now on ultra-nightmare, so I figured I'd
take it a step further. But the main reason is because it's a very fun
way to play the game! I play a lot more aggressive this time and I don't
end up just using gauss cannon with rich get richer rune to clear
everything late game.
Misc:
Previously
I've died at the cyberdemon to a very strange attack combo that I don't
think should be possible, (you can watch that here: https://youtu.be/2Ph7FYhwics
I also died at the hell guardians, I didn't practice the fight properly
and without upgrades it was more difficult than last time. Also
included in the video above is a death at titan's realm.
I had a
crash at the start of the 4th level, never happened there before. I
didn't have any other crashes besides that and fortunately it happened
at the start of the level.
I don't know why my helmet was white at the hell guardians, never seen that before, as it should be either red or yellow.